Dozens killed in market attack in northwest China

Attackers hurled bombs from two SUVs that plowed through shoppers at a busy street market in China's volatile northwestern region of Xinjiang on Thursday, killing 31 people and wounding more than 90.

The Associated Press

URUMQI, China — Attackers hurled bombs from two SUVs that plowed through shoppers at a busy street market in China's volatile northwestern region of Xinjiang on Thursday, killing 31 people and wounding more than 90.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible or how many assailants took part, but the attack in the city of Urumqi was the bloodiest in a series of violent incidents over recent months that Chinese authorities have blamed on radical separatists from the country's Muslim Uighur minority.

The Xinjiang region is home to the native Turkic-speaking Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs) but has seen large inflows from China's ethnic Han majority in recent decades. Uighur activists contend that restrictive and discriminatory policies favoring the Chinese migrants are fueling the bloodshed. The knowledge that Muslims elsewhere are rising up against their governments also seems to be contributing to the increased militancy.

The Xinjiang regional government said in a statement that the early morning attack was "a serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature."

The two vehicles crashed through barriers at 7:50 a.m. and drove right into the crowds while setting off explosives, the statement said.

The SUVs then crashed head-on and one of them exploded, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It quoted an eyewitness as saying there were up to a dozen blasts in all and that at one point one of the vehicles stopped because it was blocked by bodies and handcarts.

"I heard four or five explosions. I was very scared. I saw three or four people lying on the ground," Fang Shaoying, the owner of a small supermarket near the scene of the attack, told The Associated Press by phone.

Photos from the scene posted to popular Chinese social media site Weibo showed at least three people lying in a street with a large fire in the distance giving off huge plumes of smoke. Others, many of them elderly people who frequent the early-morning market, were sitting in the roadway in shock, with vegetables, boxes and stools strewn around them.

Hours afterward, armed paramilitary police and SWAT units patrolled streets surrounding the scene of the attack on Gongyuan North Street near central People's Park. News photographers and videographers were told not to take pictures and were forced to delete their images.

Paramilitary troops were deployed all along the street, a hub for grocery stores, restaurants and bars, many of which were closed.

However, traffic had resumed and there were no signs of the earlier explosion and fire. Chinese authorities usually attempt to tidy up such scenes and restore normality as quickly as possible.

The death toll was the highest for violence in Xinjiang since days-long riots in Urumqi in 2009 between Uighurs and Hans left almost 200 people dead, according to an official count. Thursday's attack also was the bloodiest single act of violence in Xinjiang in recent history.

Urumqi was the scene of a bomb attack at a train station late last month that killed three people, including two attackers, and injured 79. Security in the city has been significantly tightened since that attack, which took place as Chinese President Xi Jinping was visiting the region.

In response to Thursday's attack, Xi pledged to "severely punish terrorists and spare no efforts in maintaining stability," Xinhua reported.